


Loki's children

by Keenir



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Movie, jotun biology perhaps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 1:  Having come home after a long time away, Sif wasn't sure which shocked her more - that Loki had finally taken a wife, or who that wife was.  (but, Loki being Loki, there's more to the story)</p><p>Chapter 2:  Loki delivering two sons might be explained away by invoking magic.  But how to explain Jormungand, Fenrir, and Hel?</p><p>Well, that involves the time Loki and Sif were kidnapped.  In Asgard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [murdur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/murdur/gifts), [coffeesuperhero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/gifts), [nefelokokkygia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nefelokokkygia/gifts), [and all the other Loki/Sif writers](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=and+all+the+other+Loki%2FSif+writers).



> It demanded to be written, this did.

The return home was welcome in its comforting regularity. Sif could almost imagine that she hadn't been forced to spend nearly a year trapped on a Vanir battlefield as their princelings fought one another for rule of their World and the right to kneel at the feet of the Allfather. Thor was half-hugging her, half-dragging her along as Volstagg regaled the others of the Warriors Three of all that had transpired on that battlefield.

Sif noticed that Loki was not among those within or in eyeshot of the Bifrost, though.

"Welcome home, sister."

 _That_ above all and before all, drew Sif up short. She looked at her brother, scanning his face for any hints, but predictably, found none. _Save for Odin Allfather, Lord of all Aesir and King of Asgard, Heimdall addresses everyone by name,_ as a very bad feeling settled in the marrow of Sif's bones: what would drive Heimdall to break the habit of so many centuries?

**~~**

At the feast, Sif would swear that she is greeted by & is praised by everyone she has ever met in her lifetime. _All save for one._ But there is no chance for her to ask where he is, no opportunity to slip away - she and Volstagg are the talk of the room, their achievements being sung already by - she had not thought Asgard had so many minstrels or bards.

And the questions! "Do they eat their dead like Jotuns do?" "Do Vanir really have litters?" "Did you meet the new Vanir potentate?" "Does Volstagg snore?" "My father says the Vanir all worship us - was that awkward for you?"

**~~**

The sun was coming up on the dawn of the following day before any respite presented itself to Sif.

Sigyn, one of the serving girls, came over and excused the Lady Sif, saying that there were 'delicate matters which need be attended to, after time among stinky Vanir', which both served to excuse Sif from the table, and initiate yet another round of toasting Sif's health and accomplishments.

Sif followed Sigyn, not letting the younger woman out of her sight as she was led down several corridors before they came to a T-junction and stopped. Sigyn turned around and, eyes downcast, looked like she was going to apologize for something.

"What happened?" Sif asked before Sigyn could say anything.

"My Lady shieldmaiden -"

Sif waved her to silence before the entire title was recited. "Vanir are nothing if they aren't clean," Sif said. _You should know that - aren't you half Vanir? Or is that just talk?_ "So what did you want to see me about?"

"Please, I'm only the..." trailing off before she could say what might have been 'the messenger.' Somehow, while sounding humble, this little maid managed to look both insufferably smug and utterly terrifyingly awkward to Sif's eyes.

"Only the what? Please, do tell," Sif invited. "Who sent you?"

"It was I," said Loki," standing just out of sight in another arm of the T-junction, now striding out to meet them. In his arms was a baby wrapped in fine linens.

Part of Sif's mind skidded to a stop now just as thoroughly as when Heimdall had called her 'sister'...and another part of her mind wondered if this was the reason for Heimdall's uncharacteristic choice of word. "Who became a father?" Sif managed to ask.

"I did," Loki said.

One of her hands started to go to her belly, but she stopped it; much as she remembered that interlude she and he had enjoyed before she had become stranded in that Vanir battlefield, she knew that things did not work that way.

Her mind pieced together the bits and bobs - the look on Sigyn's face, Loki, the baby... "You had a child by Sigyn?" Sif asked. _By the girl who is practically allergic to swords, magic, and cuts herself on anything sharper than a bowl?_ She wasn't sure which shocked her more - that Loki had finally taken a wife, or who that wife was.

"No," Loki said.

"Naturally, everyone thinks it quite the scandal," Sigyn said. "My belly never rounded." _Or they_ thought _it the scandal, before your triumphant return became the new talk of all towns._

"All magic's fault," Loki said with a grin. "That's why I bore them, not she."

"Go back to the part about - _them_?" Sif asked.

"Twins," he said to Sif. "Tyr's watching the other one right now."

"Well," Sif said. "My congratulations."

"Why are you telling her that?" Loki asked Sif.

Sigyn nodded. "I will never accrue glory on a battlefield, Lady Sif. I know that as well as you do. Allow me to fall on the sword of this scandal, so your name remain untarnished."

Sif looked at her.

"I will raise them as you see fit, until you see fit."

When Sif trusted herself to speak, it was to ask Sigyn, "Could you watch this one while I have words with the father?"

Sigyn nodded, accepted the baby from Loki, and stood there waiting while Sif and Loki went to one side.


	2. The other three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki delivering two sons might be explained away by invoking magic. But how to explain Jormungand, Fenrir, and Hel?
> 
> Well, that involves the time Loki and Sif were kidnapped. In Asgard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, who told Volstagg about the tropes? That is a trope, yes?
> 
>  
> 
> (and so, when Loki called Black Widow a mewling ----- in the film...)

_“Drink something, Hogun,” Fandral said. Interpreting the silence as ‘I am not thirsty’, Fandral then said, “If you get a drink, that gives us an excuse to have Sigyn sent over here.”_

_“Don’t tell us you didn’t think we noticed you mooning over her,” Volstagg said._

_“Not mooning,” Thor said. “Gazing longingly while standing stoically.”_

_“Yes. That!”_

_After quaffing another quart, “I have a plan,” Volstagg said. “It happens all the time on Midgard and other Worlds.”_

_If Hogun was given to groaning, he would have right then._

_“What we do,” Volstagg said, “is we make Sigyn jealous. She gets so jealous she leaves Loki and runs to Hogun.”_

_There was silence at their part of the table as everyone processed this._

_“And how do we make Sigyn jealous?” Thor asked._

_Volstagg grinned. “We make her think Hogun is involved with someone else.”_

_Sif set down her own drink. And before anyone could volunteer her or any other woman of Asgard, she asked, “I have heard something of those tales myself. If I were to take part in this, does it not first require feelings between myself and Loki?”_ That is the function of the tales, is it not, to transform one couple into two? __

_Volstagg thought a moment before he gave a nod and said, “Okay, new plan!”_

_“No, wait,” Fandral said. “What if we get Thor to -”_

_“I fear, my friends, that I must quash this,” Thor said, holding up one hand. “After what happened on our last adventure where I wore some of Allmother’s clothes, she has forbidden me from doing so again.”_

_“It was just a little tear,” Hogun said._

_“A little tear is all that was left of Queen Frigga’s dress,” Sif muttered into her drink._

_“What about -” Fandral started to suggest._

_“Thor, do you think you would fit in anything I wear?” Sif asked him._

_“I do not believe I would fit into any of your clothes,” Thor said to the four of them._

_Sif thought back to the day before, when she had learned of…_ It still boggles the mind...

**YESTERDAY:**

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Loki said.

 _This is not my preferred method of being robbed of speech, Loki._ “Pleased?” Sif repeated, questioning. “To find you have wed our equivalent of a barmaid?”

“Not wed.”

Sif blinked at the part Loki contradicted. “Oh so all of Asgard just stood aside and let two heirs be born illegitimate?”

“I thought you were the one who oft told me not to lie unnecessarily,” Loki said.

“What?” _Yes, I told you that, more than oft, it feels like. But…_

“Sigyn is not their mother. Therefore to marry her for reasons of parentage, would be to lie.”

“But she just told me -”

Loki nodded. “She is happy to be the twins’ wet nurse, their nanny, their caretaker and even their tutor if need be.”

Something rubbed the inside of Sif’s brain the wrong way, about this. “Why?” she asked.

“Beg pardon?”

“You may, my prince,” Sif said with a grin. Seriously, “Why is she doing all this? What favor does Sigyn hope to gain by doing this?”

Loki stretched. “We must all do what we can for Asgard, each of us, utilizing our strengths and our talents to the best we can. Do you remember?”

Sif nodded. When they had been in their childhood, Freya had whined that there was nothing in Asgard for her and her soft supple fingers to do when the lot of them grew up; Sif had given a somewhat longer version of Loki’s statement just now to her and all the others gathered around – Hogun, Thor, Loki, Sigyn, Volstagg, and others – and, after everyone else had run off, Queen Frigga had clapped quietly in approval of Sif’s declaration. “I do,” was all she said to Loki, though. “And her talent is breastfeeding?”

“Her talent is silence. Have you ever known her to break a confidence?”

“Not even heard of her doing it,” Sif had to admit. _Silence and tireless devotion._

“She knows she is not the mother of the twins,” Loki said. “She doesn’t ask how I came to be carrying them within me while you were away. I suspect she believes I magicked them out of you for safety just before you ventured to Vanaheim. At the least, that’s Thor’s pet theory, which he’s keeping just as close to his chest as his shirt.”

Sif smiled at the image. “And did you? Magic your twins out of me?”

“Our." And then, in answer, Loki shrugged honestly, a rare enough gesture; Sif tried not to think if she had been the recipient of most of them. "I still have no idea. I’ve been busy with the boys. Vali and Narfi are their names, by the way.”

By the way she narrowed her eyes, Loki wondered if it had had been a bad idea to name one boy after Sif’s childhood knife. But what she said instead was, “And where do I fit in this setting of illegitimate familial bliss?”

Sensing that ‘anywhere you wish’ would only result in him being sore until next Thorsday, Loki said, “You are my friend, Sif.” Before she could do more than open her mouth at that, Loki followed it up with, “The Warriors Three, absent Volstagg, granted, have already vowed to help with the twins’ training and teaching. Thor has said a great many things, but mostly he has been carrying them and changing more diapers than even Sigyn has had chance to.” With a voice of perfect innocence, “And who would fault you for emulating your prince?” Loki asked.

Twas a wicked corner of her mind that slipped out the reply of, “Which one?” in answer to that.

**~~**

In biology, Sif was their mother. In upbringing, Sigyn was their mother. The boys knew the commonality and the distinction. They knew their father, Loki; and their uncle, Thor. They knew Volstagg and Hogun and Fandral. They knew who could be spoken to, and who carried words of little import.

They particularly liked to stand on the Bifrost and watch Heimdall just stand there. Loki wasn't sure why he found that amusing, but it was.

If Odin never remarked about where his twin grandchildren ranked in the list of succession, Loki dismissed it as owing to however many were going to be in Thor's brood - the thunderer already had one, after all.

**~~**

**Just shy of one year later:**

Thor paced up and down the throne room, his fingers itching for the chance to summon Moljinar and unleash it upon Angerboda and her doings. "Father, thank you for agreeing -"

"I give you this audience for a reason, Thor," Odin said, taking his throne now that he had arrived.

"The Jotuns have betrayed us! We must -"

"The Jotuns were betrayed by Angerboda, one of their own," Odin corrected him.

"And Angerboda now has taken over a suite within the halls of Asgard. We must move against her."

"How?" Odin asked Thor. "Were you to strike the ice-covered walls with your Hammer, my son, you would bring down more of the palace than Angerboda presently holds. No, we must wait her out."

"Wait? How can you say that?" Thor asked, trying to wrap his head around it.

"Like her, we are in Asgard. Our enviroment and our troops surround her on all sides."

"She has prisoners. She has Loki and Sif!"

"I know," Odin said, weighted down by both paternal feeling and foreknowledge.

“Father, we must -”

“Do you fear for their names or for their lives?” Odin bellowed. More under control, “A life may be rekindled. A name, a name is far more difficult to salvage.”

Thor looked over at Sigyn, who had always been the living proof of that statement. “My pardon, father,” Thor said.

Rising, Odin placed a hand on Thor’s shoulder. “Your concern does you credit, my son. “We are all worried.”

Thor knew his father sometimes included his all-seeing self in those ‘we’ statements – it sounded far less reassuring to say ‘everyone else is worried,’ or such had been Thor’s experience when he tried the forms in front of a mirror. “Should we at least summon Laufey? Surely he can command her.”

“A considered thought,” Odin said. “But every lord has at least one subject whose autonomy is nearly complete; that is Laufey’s relationship to Angerboda, sadly.”

 _Who is your Angerboda, father?_ Thor wondered. _Odur, perhaps?_ “I will return to standing vigil outside the suite, then.”

Odin nodded, knowing that Thor could not be swayed from that course of action, and knowing he did not want Thor to be swayable from that manner of action. _Loyalty._

**~~**

When Sif awoke, she was held clasped to the ice-covered wall of this room in the suite, clasped by a pocket of the ice wall folded over her wrists and hands, and over her ankles and feet, providing a footrest to brace herself upon.

Standing in the middle of the room, “Did you enjoy yourself?” Angerboda asked her mildly, as conversationally as some might inquire after a matter of no importance. “I was given to understand that you enjoy bouts of using your physical might with and without nonself weapons. Otherwise I would have restrained you before you injured yourself.”

“My wounds will be the scars I hold aloft with pride, as signs I have defeated you,” Sif stated.

“Except you can’t. Try as you might, your might is insufficient here. I am one of the few surviving Jotnar who has such might even in the heat of Asgard. My ice is not the sort you can leap out from. Or did your eddas omit that?”

Sif glared at her. Even pinioned as she was, Sif was not about to go quietly.

“Now, then, on to the purpose of my visit. A week is enough time before addressing that, don’t you think?” Angerboda asked with what Sif hoped was false politeness. _I have already spoken with Loki. A bit. Left him a text on natural philosophy._

When the captive said nothing and gave nothing away with facial gestures, “You are familiar with shapeshifters, Lady Sif, at least? Surely your eddas are not so deficient as to omit that wing of our war.”

“I know of shapeshifters,” Sif granted. _It could have been more than a week, the lying witch._

“Shapeshifterbirths are a one in two occurance, and your time has arisen, Lady Sif,” Angerboda said.

“A problem for you, then, ice witch,” Sif said. “For I am not pregnant.” _And Aesir cannot bear shapeshifters._

“True. But your husband is,” Angerboda said before sheathing herself once more in the ice wall.

As she slowly, incrementally broke free – a process that she suspected took at least a day or two in sum – Sif reviewed all she knew of shapeshifters. _Not much – even eddas of the War only mention them as shape-shifters, giant animals who only desire to kill._ Sif hesitated, even in mind. _And that they are infant Jotuns._

Falling to the floor, hands and feet still smarting from their icey encasement, Sif knew words were needed with Loki. _Again._ And knew that Angerboda’s turning this suite into a maze, would only serve to delay the inevitable. _There is not a labrynth yet made, which can thwart me._  
 **~~**

**~ “Unleash the shapeshifters!” they shouted.**

**~ Snarl! Slither! Swoop!**

**~ “They have unleashed the shapeshifters!” we cried.**

**~ Strike! Impale! Hack!**

\--from the War In Jotunheim Edda.

**~~**

When she came upon Loki at long last, she found him curled up in a corner. Or as curled up as he could be, with a lightly-distended belly.

“Loki?” Sif asked, half expecting this to be an illusion or some other trick by Angerboda, or by Loki against Angerboda. Knowing there was nothing she could say that could not be uttered by an illusion sent to trick or torment him, Sif crossed the little room and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers.

He raised his eyes to look at her, and what startled Sif was just how much fear – and disgust, certainly that – was evident in his eyes. Loki answered her unspoken question with a shift in where his gaze lay.

Sif turned her head and looked to there, at what appeared to be sheaths of natural history illustrations. When she looked back at Loki, he said “You may run screaming.” And before Sif could say ‘And when have I ever done that?’, Loki added “For the first time in your life.”

“Never,” she assured him, though she was curious about what was on those sheaths which had so impacted Loki. She began to rise, but Loki’s hands betrayed how he felt. “I am just going to look,” Sif informed him. “I will not leave.”

With great reluctance did he let her go, and Sif suspected that it was as much over fear for her. _Curiouser and curiouser._

She picked up the sheaths from where Loki had half-dropped, half-thrown them. And she beheld their contents.

Growing up, Sif had known of the Jotuns as warriors and architects. She had never considered them artistically inclined, which the sheaths were great evidence for.

“Parallels within the Nine Worlds, proving Jotun superiority,” Sif mouthed the title to herself, trying not to laugh. The examples of parallels were less amusing – though there was that playful Vanaheim flying thing Freya had always played with when she and Sif had been girls together, this said the flying thing could become a semiaquatic hunting thing if its eggburrows flooded. And on Midgard, a frog of arid lands had vegetarian tadpoles unless the water dried up early, which turned them flesh-eating and bigger. Next… the Jotuns. Shapeshifters.

Sif’s hands were - _heavy? Numb?_ \- as she moved to another sheath. “You haven’t fled,” Loki remarked.

“I know what shapeshifters are,” she reminded him. “Though I never knew similar things existed on Midgard or Vanaheim.” That was all true. It simply wasn’t everything.

But Loki let it be.

Next were illustrations of some aquatic thing, a Midgard fish, it said; after the fish’s eggs were fertilized, the male took the eggs and let them hatch in or on his body, depending upon which subtype of the fish it was. Sif recalled that pleasurable feeling shortly after climax…

 _All those times I said I would not marry, that I wanted to never be weighted down with pregnancy…_ Sif reflected. She looked back at Loki. “You thought this would scare me?” _It comes off as more like you fulfilling that vow I always made._

Before he could answer, Loki went into labor.

**~~**

_Three children. Just as Angerboda predicted,_ Sif knew, wiping the afterbirth off one.

“I believe he’s polished now,” Loki said, amused in addition to being exhausted. “Like armor.”

“Consider what I polished in times past,” Sif reminded him.

“True. And what say you of him and his siblings?” Two boys and a girl.

“They’re babies,” Sif said. The boy in her arms had her complexion everywhere but his arms and legs, which were an unquestionable Jotnar Blue; his brother was the reverse; their sister had Loki’s eyes, and the rest was pure Sif as she’d been at that mewling age. “Ours.”

Loki relaxed from a tenseness he’d been trying not to feel.

"And that one," looking at the boy Loki was holding in the crook of one arm, "We will name after my grandfather."

"You would burden a child with the name Jörmungand?" Loki asked lightly.

"His parents did," Sif said with a perfectly straight face.

Striding out from the room's far wall in reaction to the stated 'ours', “That is excellent news,” Angerboda said.

“Begone!” Sif commanded Angerboda, a growl escaping her smooth throat; the blue-bodied boy looked up and over at his mother. “They are none of them yours!”

“That is why I am here,” Angerboda said. “I have so much autonomy from Lord Laufey because I do errands. I keep the oaths which he cannot be seen to do.”

“Speak sense, witch,” Loki warned her.

 _The last war of our Worlds ended with an agreement, one to be consumated in your generation or the next; dependant upon all of Asgard and Jotunheim believing Loki is what they've always thought him._ Angerboda knelt and proclaimed, "All hail the successor of Lord Laufey, King of Jotunheim."

"Never," Loki spat.

"Not you," she said mildly.

"Me?" Sif asked.

"No."

"Well, for the successor's sake, break these walls," Sif commanded her.

"I will never. And as you have found yourself, neither of you are strong enough."

As the babies began to wail, they also began to change. _Shapeshifters._ The little girl clutched Sif's hand tightly, and Sif spoke soothingly to her. But the girl's free hand tensed, balling up into a fist that she held tightly, as her muscles corded and skin wrapped tighter around the bones on that side of her body.

Her brothers underwent more severe alterations.

**~~**

The suite, braced by ice for so long, collapsed as a behemoth serpentine tail shoved it into rubble. Thor dodged out of the way just in time to see the tail and its owner, a snake head broader than Thor's own bed was long, shoving the rest of the wall out of the way. And as the dust and snowy shards settled, Thor could see Sif helping Loki to stand up in the captive room.

He could also see Angerboda had been torn in two, one half getting shook like a rag doll...by a wolf twice Thor's own size.

"Careful, lest your jaw drop," Loki chuckled at Thor.

"Do you like our children?" Sif asked.

Thor mouthed 'children', and a few seconds later, he boomed with his usual cheeriness, "I'm an uncle!" He didn't care that it was an again, he was just relieved they were okay, and excited that he was an uncle again.

"Hello, father," Narvi said, having been beside Thor until the uncle had begun to yell and run back to summon others to the scene.

"Hello," Loki said. "Where's your twin?"

"Sitting atop Volstagg's head and getting a guided tour, narrated by Hogun, of all Asgard."

Sif couldn't help but laugh, a sentiment Loki shared. "I'm not sure which is the greater accomplishment there."

"Hogun's narration, I'm sure," Loki said. "Though surely this will be a fine tale to share." And, "Narvi, we would like you to meet your sister and brothers."

"Hello," Narvi said. "Have you named them yet, father?"

"We have. Fenrir, put her down when we're making introductions, if you please. Fenrir, Narvi. And this is Jörmungand. And Hel."

"Hello," Hel said quietly.

"Can I teach them my favorite games?" Narvi asked.

"I'd like that," Sif said, and Loki nodded agreement. Sif then leaned against Loki and whispered, "Should there be another to come, _I_ will be bearing it."

"From what I remember of those diagrammings, that sounds painful," Loki replied in an equal whisper.

"A mighty warrior prince of Asgard, father of five, and you fear pain?" she chuckled. Then Sif nipped at his ear.

**~~**

As ever, Odin had final say over all the reports and eddas and tales; he stated that Angerboda's magic had so permeated the suite that it enhanced the powers that Sif's and Loki's children were born with. Powers that they had used to revenge against their parents' captor, and power to break free of the suite. It was not without precedent, after all - Thor's own son, as an infant, had proven to be stronger than Thor himself.

For now, Jörmungand was set in the tidepools and shallow sea around Asgard. Fenrir had the run of the fields and mountainsides. Hel kept her own company largely in the peaks of the towers of Asgard. And all three talked often with the shapeshifters who had sided with Odin in the last Jotun War - Hugnin and Munin.

Odin had stated that the three were normal children born of normal parents, shaped by need and devotion. And he was Allfather, all-seeing. So who would naysay him, and for why?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **.----------------------------------------------.**  
>  author's note: one question remains in my mind: is this an AU, or is there a way to link from the end of this, to the beginning of Thor?


End file.
